dr. Alexandr Osipian: Armenian Merchant Networks and Long Distance Trade Between Early Modern Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Russia

Ústav východoevropských studií FF UK zve na přednášku dr. Alexandra Osipiana, která se bude konat 15. března od 17:00 v seminární místnosti ve 3. patře ve Valentinské 91/1.

The globalizing of trade and the spread of merchant networks were important features of the early modern world. For a long time, the phenomenon was studied through prism of the trans-Atlantic trade and the East-India joint-stock companies. The current project approaches Eastern Europe and the Middle East not as a periphery of the West but as self-sufficient region without clearly defined roles of “dominant” and “subordinate. The great deal of the long-distance trade in the region was done by stateless diasporas – Armenian, Greek, and Jewish. Armenian trading diaspora was particularly successful since it operated in the whole region. The current project focuses on the formal and informal conditions of the caravan trade between early modern Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Russia. The aim is to analyse Armenian merchant networks on the three-dimensional level – as operating long-distance trade (logistics and legal infrastructure), consolidating the “network of trust and credit” inside the diaspora, and establishing “protection network” with the holders of power (protection-in-exchange-for-services).

Alexandr Osipian studied history at the University of Chernivtsi, Ukraine. He was visiting scholar at the George Washington University, Washington D.C., the University of California, Berkeley, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Free University of Berlin. In 2014-2015 he took part in the Harvard University research project “From Riverbed to Seashore. Art on the Move in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean in the Early Modern Period”. He served as a Visiting Professor of History at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany. Since December 2022 he is Research Fellow at the GWZO.